


Hanamiya

by mizael



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Deconstruction, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Multi, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7525750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizael/pseuds/mizael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakaki Yuuya is eighteen when he coughs up his first flower petals, and knows then with growing dread that he only has one year left to live.</p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <i>In the first five months, it is only a building crescendo of retching petals, an inconvenience that can be endured and wiped away. Yuuya can burn the evidence of his disease as easily as he coughs it up. No one will be the wiser to his illness, and he would not have to suffer their looks of pity.</i>
  </p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	1. 花

**Author's Note:**

> this is a rewrite of my other hanahaki-byou fic, [flower eater](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4590003)
> 
> this piece is a commission for [cakwe](http://akayu-trash.tumblr.com/)!! fellow akayuu (and overlord) fan! they paid for 3k words but they've been waiting on this commission for a few months now, so i wanted to thank them for waiting so long and this monster came out ;_;

It never starts out like the movies say they do: meeting a kind and handsome man by bumping into him while going through a day-to-day routine, and then waking up the next morning with saliva-coated flower petals the color of his hair falling from your lips. From there, the movies say, love is assured.

Yuuya wakes up one morning with the suffocating scent of floral air-freshener, despite never, ever, wanting to touch anything remotely perfume-related in his life, and reaches for the bleary alarm clock next to his bed when he feels water on his fingers and something soft clinging to his skin.

In the next moment, he jumps out of bed with his heart thumping in his ears, covers scattered to the floor, and watches in mute horror as a trail of barely noticeable white petals follow the tracks of his drool and litters one side of his pillow.

He doesn’t know what flowers they are, whose petals they belong to, or even anyone with silver-white hair in his life, but Yuuya knows this:

The mark of flowers in his mouth is a death sentence, a slow-motion guillotine that will eventually sever the life from his body.

He is graveyard soil, rotting away to provide nutrients for the parasitic blooms that will consume every inch of his flesh, and it won't be long before he's buried beneath them.

 

 

Preparing for death is a surreal experience, as one would think, but Yuuya rejects his demise with panicked certainty and delusion. No one ever wants to admit they'll die, and no one ever wants to _die._ A permanent solution to a temporary problem is not a want of death, just a want of escape. But Yuuya is only eighteen with his whole life ahead of him. He doesn't want to die.

He takes an extra ten minutes in the bathroom every morning to deposit his daily dose of flowers into the toilet, and then wipes his mouth and pretends as if it never happened, flushing away the evidence of his downfall. He doesn't want to be reminded, and he is content to spend his time in denial.

Yuuri only gives him a few questioning looks—Yuuya has to thank his lucky stars that his roommate already keeps plants in the house, so the scent of lush meadows that follows Yuuya’s every step is written away as early spring blooms beginning to flourish after winter’s leave.

“If the flowers are blooming this early, I’m going to open the patio doors more,” says Yuuri, clipped and succinct, holding a watering can in one hand and his phone in the other. “Natural, unfiltered sunlight will be good for their growth.”

Yuuya doesn’t protest. “Sure,” he says, biting into a soft boiled egg and swallowing his food with the extra petals that have sprung in his mouth as if they aren’t there.

“Hmm,” Yuuri hums, swiping left and right on his phone as he peers distractedly at the screen through the black rectangle frames of his glasses. In two-second intervals, he moves the watering can and tilts it over a different potted plant.

“Is something the matter?”

“Rin texted me," Yuuri bites the inside of his cheek. "Yuugo stopped growing blue petunias out of his skin. Right in front of her eyes, she says. They all shrunk and withered away to nothing, she says.”

Something clenches in Yuuya’s gut, perhaps envy of someone who escaped death while _he_ had just been pulled into its embrace. “How?”

“ _Presumably,_ he kissed Kurosaki Shun on the mouth after punching him in the face, telling him what a bastard he is, and that even if Kurosaki is in denial of his death, _he_ wants to live, and then proceeded to yank Kurosaki’s tie hard enough that they both fell over,” Yuuri snorts, placing the watering can down with a soft _clack_. “I suppose that’s more believable than Yuugo stuttering out a love confession.”

Yuuya smiles bitterly down at his food, feeling more taunting petals on his tongue, reminding him of the rotting demise that will await him soon if he doesn’t find his soulmate like Yuugo did. He swallows them all down again with a grimace.

A year is a long time. Yuuya just hopes it’s long enough.

“I’m going to meet up with Rin,” Yuuri says, and Yuuya blinks as he realizes that his roommate has moved from watering the plants to pulling on his shoes at the door when he wasn’t paying attention. “I have late hours at the botanical gardens tonight. Don’t wait for me.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve already opened the patio doors, but you can close them in an hour. I know you don’t like the air conditioning going to naught.”

“That’s fine,” Yuuya says, eyes darting to the plants that line the window and the floor, as if _they_ would hold the key to his salvation. He feels another batch of petals beginning to make its way up his throat. “I can leave them open today.”

“Really?” Yuuri levels him with a curious gaze and a raised eyebrow. “It’s going to get stuffy from the heat.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s cool. I can blast the air conditioning in my room instead.”

“Hm,” Yuuri gives him a side glance, but picks up his keys from the holder next to the door, and Yuuya hears the jingling of the metal together as the front door is opened.

There is a question that hangs in the air—Yuuya knows Yuuri is not daft. Yuuya also knows he usually makes a big fuss of opening the patio door when the air conditioning is going, _to not waste money_ , he says, and Yuuri usually agrees. After all, new plants are much more affordable than their energy bill (not that any of Yuuri’s plants have ever died).

Yuuya inhales. “I don’t like the smell of flowers,” he lies.

“Of course,” Yuuri replies, untrusting.

Yuuya gets up and leaves his dishes in the sink, scraping the half-eaten breakfast into the garbage disposal with shaking hands. The door closes afterwards, and Yuuya almost drops the plate in his hands at the noise.

He is hungry, but he is in no mood to eat. After all—there is no manner of food that can cure a dying man.

 

 

Scientifically, his mother used to tell him, _hanahaki-byou,_ the flower-spitting disease, is a genetic ailment passed down through generations, and spread via the same way. Most of the populace has it, but there are those lucky few who are immune to it.

Airborne pollen does not activate it, nor does ingestion, or contact, or even love. Fate is not kind. Soulmates are _selected,_ not picked.

When one begins to suffer from _hanahaki-byou_ , it means their soulmate is nearby, and until they meet and bond together, the disease will feast and eat away at every cell in his body until the flowers finally take root in his heart and brain and leave him lifeless.

In the first five months, it is only a building crescendo of retching petals, an inconvenience that can be endured and wiped away. Yuuya can burn the evidence of his disease as easily as he coughs it up. No one will be the wiser to his illness, and he would not have to suffer their looks of pity.

On the sixth month, if the soulmate still has not been found and bonded yet, the flowers will evolve and grow out of the open orifices of his face: his eyes, ears, nose, mouth. Each person’s first flower is in a different place. For every month afterward, another flower will grow out of any orifice that hasn’t been taken yet, until the ninth month.

At that point, Yuuya will be a walking and rotting corpse as the flowers eat his skin, and replace his flesh with their silky petals. It will start with half of his face, and then one of his arms, and then one of his legs, steadily growing and overtaking until they close in on his heart, until _hanahaki-byou_ eats him alive.

At the end of the twelfth month, Yuuya will die.

 

 

Yuuya spends two months in denial, spitting out flower petals that the internet tells him are called white amaryllis. The images he pulls up of the whole flower are beautiful, but he commits it to memory so he can hate it. When the flower grows out of his face later, Yuuya will never see anything but the blooms that try to suffocate him whole.

The search also pulls up a website telling a chilling Greek myth about a nymph named Amaryllis, who sacrificed herself to become the beautiful flower of her unrequited lover’s dreams by stabbing herself with a golden arrow everyday until a red amaryllis grew from her blood. Yuuya then promptly vomits into the trash can next to his desk afterward, the petals falling shakily down from his mouth.

That day, Yuuya wipes his chin and chugs an entire bottle of water, chasing the taste of flowers from his mouth and ignoring the lurch in his stomach.

He washes his hands in the bathroom sink and then collects the trash can next to his desk, taking it down to the shared apartment incinerator and throwing it all—the bin and the trash inside—into the roaring flames. He doesn't go back up until he's sure all of it has been reduced to ashes.

Yuuri throws him another tight-lipped questioning gaze as Yuuya trudges back into the apartment, hands bare of even the plastic bin.

“Yuuya—”

“I-I was trying to throw my trash into the incinerator, but I accidentally threw my bin, too,” Yuuya nervously laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s fine, though, I can buy another one from the 100 yen store.”

Silence.

Yuuya tries to use it to go back into the comfort of his room, but Yuuri speaks up.

“Yuuya, do you have—”

“I have a show soon!” he blurts out, hands flying to his mouth to push and swallow more petals back down. “I’ll be rehearsing tonight. Don't bother me, okay?”

With a panicked smile, he quickly flees.

 

 

It is cliche, Yuuya thinks, but Yuuri doesn't understand.

Yuuri spat out green chrysanthemums on the same day Rin almost choked on pastel lavenders. They found each other quickly enough, though their first meeting ended in a giant misunderstanding that had Rin terrified of him for a week.

But that was for a week, and they worked it out within the next, and Yuuri saw no more green petals fall from his mouth ever again.

It had been a shock, at the time, Yuuya thinking that Yuuri was going to die at the young age of seventeen.

In the end, Yuuri kept his life.

Yuuya still doesn't know how to carry on with his.

 

 

Five months in, and Yuuya’s coughing fits have steadily become more frequent. He is discovered pulling petals from his mouth by a lingering spectator after one of his shows, and his panicked rush to swear them to secrecy leads to something else.

“I’m Grace. Grace Tyler,” she says, silver-white hair with a sliver of a smile. “I’ve always wanted to meet you.”

Yuuya feels his heart thud in his chest, whether from adrenaline or infatuation, he doesn't know. He doesn't love this woman—in fact, he doesn't even know this woman—but if they were fated to be, and she will save him from the flowers that threaten to consume his body, he will try his hardest _to_ love her.

“Sakaki Yuuya,” he says, with a smile, probably the first one in a while that he hasn't faked. “But you know that already, right?”

“Of course!” she flicks her hair behind her shoulders with a flourish. “I love watching your shows. Your performance is amazing! It always makes me want to come back for more!”

Yuuya feels the elation swell in his chest, a grin on his lips, and he steps forward towards salvation to offer her a hand. “Ah, my lady, you humble me,” he says dramatically, and she laughs. “I’m about to clean up and get dinner. Wanna come?”

She does her own stage bow, eyes shining with a smile. “Of course, messere.”

And if she knows about the flowers falling out of his mouth, then she must be coughing red petals, too. She must be elated to find her soulmate, too. She must be excited to be rid of her disease, too.

All Yuuya sees and hears is silver-white, silver-white, _silver-white._

The flowers momentarily disappear from his mouth.

Grace Tyler, he learns, is from a rich family that vacations in Greece in the summer, who likes wearing long Valentino dresses with Chanel sunglasses and a necklace made of real diamonds. Her bag is Coach, her makeup is Mary Kay, and her surprise gift to Yuuya two weeks into their relationship is a perfectly tailored Prada suit.

She is shy one minute, bold the next, and stares at Yuuya with the most beautiful wonderment in her eyes whenever he talks, listening to every drop of conversation that she can glean from him with a sly smile and appreciated theatrics.

The flowers still come up his throat, but they are less frequent. Yuuya thinks that this is finally what he needs, and starts to feel a deep-seated love blossoming from the deepest reaches of his heart. He has always been a dreamer, and the fact that he can love so easily should be a deterrent, but he perseveres.

He holds Grace’s hand on the way home, one month after their first date, and kisses her on the doorstep of her white mansion, with her gated driveway and large garden.

It is not a long kiss, because it is chaste, and Yuuya pulls away long enough to see Grace giggle and laugh with a coating of red dusting her cheeks. He thinks she looks beautiful, and he tells her as much.

Grace smiles and kisses his cheek in turn, before disappearing behind the double doors of her mansion.

Yuuya feels his heart leap out of his mouth, and smiles stupidly on his way home.

 

 

A week later, he wakes up to another wave of floral perfume, except this time Yuuya almost gags at the smell. It is strong, _too strong,_ and he stumbles weakly into the bathroom to begin his morning ritual of hacking and coughing.

In the mirror, looking back at him, is a stalk of white amaryllis growing out of his left eye, drooping low to cover almost half of his face and creating a stark contrast against his red eyes.

When Yuuya opens his mouth to scream, a cascade of white chrysanthemum petals fall out instead.

Grace Tyler is not his soulmate.

 

 

“I’m sorry,” he says over the phone, gripping an ornate hand mirror as he stares, obsessed, at his reflection, and the flower that obscures half his face. His hands are shaking, and he's on the verge of crying. “I’m sorry.”

“Yuuya—” Grace’s voice is static against his ears, and Yuuya can't hear anything that she says to him, whether to berate or pity him. He doesn't know which one he wants more.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, for the tenth time, and his eyes don't leave the mirror. The first tear that falls down his cheek is accompanied by another white petal. Now, in his despair, he can even cry flowers. It won't be long until he is consumed completely, consumed all the way down to his bones. “ _I’m sorry._ ”

Before she can say anything else, Yuuya hangs up, and cries amaryllises out of his eyes, hiccuping chrysanthemums out of his mouth. The scattered and wet petals in his hands are all taunting him, trying to tell him of love and acceptance, but Yuuya shuns all of it.

There is no love from the _hanahaki-byou,_ only a slow, painful, and _lonely_ death.

 

 

“Yuuya—”

“No.”

“ _Yuuya—_ ”

“No.”

“Yuuya, you haven't been out of your room for two days. If you aren't going to open this door, I will personally invite Yuugo over and he will kick it down himself, and you can suffer his wailing firsthand instead of through the phone.”

There is a prolonged silence, Yuuri digging his nails into his arms as he waits, frowning, before the sound of a click as the door cracks open just a bit.

“You are cruel,” Yuuya says, pouting half-heartedly at the smug face of his roommate. There are bags beneath his eyes. “I am fine.”

“You are not,” Yuuri doesn't wait for Yuuya to try and hide again as he thrusts his arm firmly at the door, effectively shoving Yuuya back as the door slams into his face. He walks in without a second thought, and closes the door gently behind him, blocking escape.

The sight of Yuuya trying, in vain, to hide the large white flower growing out of his left eye is enough to stop Yuuri in his tracks. The fragrant aroma of flowers in the room also hits him like a train, and it's strong enough to make even _Yuuri_ gag, a hand coming up to his mouth to hide the distasteful expression on his face as he tries to adjust to the stench.

“Y-Yuuri, I’m just trying out a new accessory—”

“How long,” Yuuri snaps, turning a full one hundred and eighty degrees to stare long and hard into Yuuya’s eyes: one red and the other blocked by a flower. White amaryllis.

Yuuya withers. “S-Since Yuugo got rid of his.”

“I knew it,” Yuuri groans, pushing his face into his hand. “It's been six months, Yuuya. Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't want you to pity me!” Yuuya shouts in return, the tears beginning to form in his eyes again, the petals beginning to collect at the corners. “I didn't want anyone to know I was… dying…”

“And why didn't you?” Yuuri shoots a sharp glare at him, which Yuuya shrinks further away at. “Did you think I wouldn't care, darling?”

Terms of endearment. Yuuri is incensed. Yuuya ducks his head in shame.

“Did you think I would stand quietly around while you rotted away in your self-pity and offered you false words of encouragement?”

Yuuya doesn't say anything.

“ _Darling._ ”

“Y-Yes…”

Yuuri sighs, crossing his arms. “Since it's white, I'm assuming that your soulmate is someone with white or silver hair. You're in luck that I know someone with that description. Though I'd rather not see his face anytime soon.”

“You don't have to—”

“Do you want to live?” Yuuri asks bluntly, giving Yuuya the blankest stares he has ever received, and Yuuya freezes.

“...”

“Do you want to wallow away into nothingness? If you say yes, I’ll leave you alone to die of the disease without question.”

“I…” Yuuya swallows, feeling the petals stick to the roof of his throat. He wants to push his tongue against them until they fall off, but Yuuya doesn't have time to think of only enduring another day when it is his sixth month. He is already halfway to death. “I…”

“I’ll rephrase myself: do you want to die _alone?_ ”

“No!” Yuuya suddenly jerks, hands reaching out to grab tightly into Yuuri’s shirt, body shaking. “N-No, not alone, you're… you're here… right?”

“I am,” Yuuri spares Yuuya a glance and sighs, phone already in his hand as he pulls up his contacts and looks through it for a specific name. “This is the one and only time I will be dialing this number, let’s hope.”

Something connects on the other side, Yuuri listening intently and responding appropriately, and Yuuya zones out as he tries to calm down from being discovered. Rather than being disappointed at him, Yuuri only got… angry? Angry at Yuuya for not telling him? Why—

“—Akaba Yuuri.”

Yuuya startles. He has never heard Yuuri’s full name before, despite them having lived together for two years. As far as Yuuri has told him, he's adopted, and hates being in the same building as his… older brother, was it?

Yuuri offers a few more quick words to whoever is on the other line, and then finally turns to face Yuuya.

“Do me a favor, Yuuya.”

“Y-Yeah?”

“Punch Akaba Reiji in the face when you see him.”

 

 

In the restroom of the Leo Corporation lobby, Yuuya pulls his hood further down over his head, and tries to push the flower on his face to a more agreeable and hidden position, but fears that if he pulls too hard, he will pull his entire eye out with it. Its roots are already lodged around his eyeball, encircling and entrapping.

For all the petals he has coughed up, and the ones he has cried, the flower growing on his face has never lost a single petal. Though it droops from its stem, it is because the bloom is too heavy, not because of its poor health.

In contrast, Yuuya hides his face of death further beneath his hood, heart pounding loudly in his ears as he advances from the restroom and towards the large front desk in the lobby.

“Welcome to Leo Corporation,” the receptionist gives him a friendly, but suspicious, smile as he walks towards her. “How can I help you today?”

Yuuya tries to smile, and opens his mouth—

The receptionist screams.

A pile of petals fall out of his mouth, this time joined by bits of green stems, and the flower on his face that had been pushed back to his hair suddenly drops forward as if in greeting. Yuuya stills, eyes wide, and quickly covers his mouth.

“Who let him in there? Guards! Security!” the receptionist is frantic, clutching a phone tightly in her hands, screaming helplessly at him as if Yuuya is a monster.

 _Hanahaki-byou_ is not contagious, but he is the walking personification of death.

It is normal for life to be scared of death. It is normal for death to hate life.

Yuuya reaches his hand out, trying to smile and look harmless. “N-No, I have an appointment with… with Akaba Reiji,” he says, pleading, but the receptionist just backs away further in fear, as if his touch would spread his disease to her. “My name is Sakaki—hey!”

A group of large men in suits come and grab him, and Yuuya fights. Yuuya fights with all the force of a human being trying to escape from the clutches of death.

“I’m Sakaki Yuuya!” he shouts, crying. “Please! I have an appointment with Akaba Reiji!”

_He doesn’t want to die. He only has six months left to live._

The guards drag him all the way to the door, and no matter how much Yuuya fights, how much he tries to bend and twist out of their grasp, he cannot.

“Stop,” a voice says from further inside, and the commotion stops almost immediately. “He has an appointment with me. Why are you treating a Leo Corporation guest this way?”

“H-He has h-hana—”

“ _Hanahaki-byou_ is not a contagious disease. This is common knowledge. If you are discriminating against a guest because of your own fears and insecurities, you are not fit to work for Leo Corporation,” a man walks forward to the center of the room, and Yuuya cannot help but stare.

When Yuuya first saw Grace’s silver-white hair, he had thought she was almost glowing, _shining_ under the stage lights. The lights in the lobby of the Leo Corporation building are just as bright as those on stage, but the man who stands underneath them is in a different league altogether. He is both the actor and the writer.

“I-I’m sorry, sir…”

“Do not apologize to me,” Akaba Reiji narrows his eyes at the receptionist behind the desk, and then gestures with a jerk of his chin in Yuuya’s direction. “Apologize to him.”

The receptionist looks hesitant, but quickly bows her head at Reiji’s glare. “I-I’m extremely sorry for the trouble I have caused, S-Sakaki Yuuya-san.”

Yuuya wants to say _it’s fine._ It is not.

He is dying.

He is being eaten alive with each second that ticks by, and she had metaphorically spit on him because he only had half a year left to live, and the flowers had shown on his face.

The hands which were holding him back finally let him go. “Sakaki-san, please pardon my employee’s prejudice,” Akaba Reiji bows politely. “If you will follow me to the elevators, we can go to my office together.”

Yuuya mutely follows the back of Akaba Reiji, and boards the spacious elevator as it rides all the way to the top of the skyscraper.

When the doors open, Reiji immediately starts walking large paces to his desk on the other side of the room, and Yuuya struggles to keep up with his long strides. The man is so much more taller than him—perhaps by a head or two. Yuuya’s exhaustion holds him back from matching Reiji stride-for-stride even more, so he opts to follow at his own pace.

“I imagine you’re impatient given your condition, so I will not divulge into small talk,” Akaba Reiji sits down at his desk, leaning back against the leather and leisurely crossing his legs. Yuuya’s would-be savior (he hopes) is dressed in a neatly pressed pinstripe suit, and Yuuya suddenly feels as though he is in the wrong attire, even if he had tried his best to scourge up clothes that could pass as ‘business-casual’.

The Prada suit gift in his closet is covered in tears, petals, and pollen. He doesn’t want to look at it.

“Please feel free to call me Yuuya. Akaba-san, I know this is really sudden,” Yuuya is quick to bow his head. “I am six-and-a-half months into _hanahaki-byou_. Please, if you are my soulmate—”

“Yuuya,” Reiji’s voice pierces through his thoughts. “Yuuri has given me most of the details, and I am sympathetic to your predicament, but I should tell you one thing.”

Yuuya’s heart pounds loudly in his ears.

“I am immune to _hanahaki-byou_. There may be a chance I do not have a soulmate at all.”


	2. 宮

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The flowers, they obscure him.

“The system is flawed,” Yuugo had said once, leaning on the railing of Yuuya’s balcony while watching the city pass by below with blank eyes. “And I don't mean the government or something deep like that. That's Shinji’s thing.”

Yuuya had, at that point, only been a month into _hanahaki-byou,_ and could still remember the feeling of life before the flowers took him. He had pursed his lips and made a small _hmmm_ sound, as if contemplating Yuugo’s point.

“What system, then?”

“You know, the whole soulmate thing,” Yuugo had said, sighing. “Like how we're supposed to fit perfectly in with the people that those stupid flowers think is right for us, like we don't have a choice.”

Yuuya had a fleeting thought to the white petals that fell out of his mouth, and agreed silently in his head. He is only eighteen—he has the world ahead of him, his _whole life_ ahead of him. Eighteen is too young to be bound to someone you're supposed to be with for the rest of your life. There are many people in the world he has yet to meet, to bond with, and yet his end goal has already been set in stone.

But instead of saying that, Yuuya had acted the part of a naive friend who has never experienced the _hanahaki-byou._

“But there might be a reason for that, maybe?” he tried hesitantly, looking at the watering can in his hands. Yuuri had not been home since yesterday afternoon, and Yuuya had (and still has) too much of a guilty conscience to leave his plants unattended. “They can't be wrong.”

Part of him had hoped that would be true, that his soulmate had been forged and created for him and him alone, and vice versa, and that they would easily fall into each other's arms as soon as they met, _if_ they ever met. The other part of him had ignored the disease growing in his throat and spat pollen like spit whenever the word ‘soulmate’ came up.

“Kurosaki’s a good guy, don't get me wrong,” Yuugo had looked at his hands and frowned. “He just wasn't what I expected.”

“What do you mean?”

“I grew up with Rin—you know that—and we haven't been separated since we could walk. We know each other inside and out. She probably knows me better than myself. She cares for me so much, and she’s done so much for me, and I adore her, but... but in the end, I coughed up blue flowers and not green, and she coughed up purple flowers and not blue. Even if we were happy to spend the rest of our lives together, we can't. We weren't the ones who were made _specifically_ for each other.”

Yuuya had reached out, mouth opening to say something comforting, but Yuugo had shook his head and sighed again.

“Yuugo.”

“All I'm saying is that soulmates aren't all they're cracked up to be. When I’m with Kurosaki I feel comfortable, but look at me,” Yuugo had gestured to himself. “I can't even call him by his actual name.”

“It just takes time, I’m sure,” Yuuya had said, not sure if he was trying to convince Yuugo or himself. But, he thought bitterly, at least Yuugo knew who his soulmate was. “Connections don't happen like magic, you know?”

“Yeah, but you know who I want to be with right now?”

“Who?”

Yuugo had gone silent for a moment, before turning around with the most sorrowful eyes, and without thinking, Yuuya had reached out to pull him into an embrace as Yuugo unexpectedly went into tears, clinging onto Yuuya’s shirt even as Yuuya himself felt the need to retch his own petals.

“I want to be with Rin. I still love her, but the damn flowers say I can't because _she wasn't made for me_. We spent our whole life together, and this is what I get in return?”

“Yuugo…”

“Don’t say anything. Don’t. Just…”

Yuugo had exhaled, shaking, gripping too tightly onto Yuuya’s quickly wrinkling button-up shirt and leaving tear stains on the fabric.

“Just listen.”

And he had cried.

(and cried and cried and cried)

 

 

Like all beautiful things, _hanahaki-byou_ has a story. It starts much the same way standard romance stories go, but _hanahaki-byou_ never tells a tale about romance and the triumph of humanity in forging bonds, or the happily ever after that’s rose-tinted and perfect. Like all deadly things, _hanahaki-byou_ ends with a pile of bodies and forgotten words whispered into the undertow.

Once upon a time, there existed a village near the sea, and they were prosperous. Where farm life could suffer droughts and floods, the village had the sea and the endless life within it to sustain them. The stories say they lived in harmony with the water. They loved the sea, and in return the sea loved them just as much.

There in the village lived a flower girl who went barefoot to the mountains beyond the borders, turning away from the sea everyday, and climbed the rocky paths with callouses on her feet. At the end of the day, she returned with a bundle of mountain flowers, and sold them to the lovestruck residents of the village.

Every five years, the village would give an offering to the sea. The offering would be preceded by a week of festivities and celebration, and large feasts for the entire village to share would be held every day until it was time.

They would dress the most beautiful maiden in the village in her wedding clothes, and then rowed her out on a boat to sea.

In all her finery and glory, the maiden would be the offering—the sacrifice—to the waters. _Here is a bride,_ they would say. _Here is a bride to keep you company in our place._

The flower girl had been chosen as the offering that year. Whether from fear of the sea, or fear of death, she ran away from the village and into the safety of the mountains. No one knew the worn dirt and pathways more than she did. No one would find her.

But the villagers were persistent, and they searched six days and six nights. On the seventh day, they found the girl in a hidden cave in the rocks, huddled in the soft embrace of the mountain flowers that grew even in the dark. She kicked and she screamed as they caught her, but they successfully brought her back to the village and dressed her in her wedding clothes.

Her boat was pushed to sea, and she, in her wedding gown, had been weighed into the boat with chains. They say she kicked even then, screamed ever more, but the villagers did not heed her cries. Alone, abandoned, and left to die, she said a curse.

“I shall be wed to the sea,” she said. “And it shall have no harsher mistress. When the waters come to claim me whole, I will hope in my last moments that everyone who set me here against my will shall know the pain of being bound to a fate and a husband they cannot change. A husband who shall not know me, like I do not know him. And if your husband shall not come, then may you both be swallowed in the depths.”

As her boat treaded slowly across the water, a great wave rose in front of her, and the flower girl screamed as her chains weighed and dragged her down to the dark abyss.

They say the village had been struck by a plague the next week, a plague of mountain flowers mourning for the girl who had called the mountain her home. They stubbornly drew roots in the villager’s flesh, and slowly devoured them whole. The few that escaped into other nearby villages or towns carried the pollen of the mountain with them, and from those seeds sprouted even more flowers.

They say it is the flower girl herself in your veins when _hanahaki-byou_ strikes, trying to deal retribution for a fate she never could escape before she had been devoured into the murky undertow.

For every petal coughed up, it is a reminder of the tears she wept sitting alone on the boat, headed for a death she could not run from, a death she was forced into.

Now, Yuuya suffers her curse, and feels the pollen reignite in his veins.

 

 

Akaba Reiji leaves him a sentence as a parting gift—he offers other things, too: a ride home, a phone number, a business card with his name emblazoned in moving letters. _I am immune to hanahaki-byou._

The card crinkles in his hands. Yuuya presses fingerprints into the gloss.

_I may not have a soulmate at all._

The car he is ushered into is a long, black sedan, and Reiji’s guards close the door behind him. The driver asks him where he lives, and Yuuya provides an address.

When the GPS on the dashboard says, in its perfect voice, _arriving, on right,_ the driver stills and stops the car. “This can’t be right,” he says, trying to poke and prod at the machine that tells him the address he input is the correct one.

Yuuya moves, unnoticed, out of the car.

A row of stones greet him, stretching as far as the eye can see. Sometimes there are names and dates engraved on them, and other times there are only dates. Sticks of incense burn in front of some, and food left behind for others. Yuuya walks forward, pass the dates and the names, and stops at two identical blocks of stone sitting next to each other.

There is a pot left in front of them, blackened by fire. Yuuya throws Akaba Reiji’s business card into the pot.

“I am going to die,” he says to the pot, and sits down in front of it. “I don’t want to die.”

He expects nothing but silence, and he is not disappointed.

Yuuya digs a pack of matches out of his pocket, and expertly strikes one on fire. He has had to burn the petals he coughs every day while not at home, and even in the damp winter air, it lights.

Yuuya takes a deep breath, and throws the burning match into the pot, watching as it catches flame and consumes the piece of paper inside.

The driver finds him watching the last dying embers of the fire some time later.

“If you wanted to stop somewhere, you should have told me,” he says. “I would have happily given you a detour before heading home.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuuya says. “I wanted to pay respects.”

“Ah, are these your folks?” the driver gives a cursory glance to the pot, before bowing once in front of the stones. “I am sorry for interrupting you.”

Yuuya smiles, ignoring the amaryllis blocking half of his vision. “Yes, they are.”

“Do you need some more time?”

“It’s okay, I’m done,” Yuuya picks a petal from the edge of his lips and deposits that into the pot, too, to be devoured by the flames. “Sorry for the trouble.”

“It’s not a problem. Ready to head home, then?”

“Yeah.”

Yuuya follows the back of the driver to the car, and watches the scenery go by once the engine begins rumbling and he is taken away.

He has no heart to tell the driver that the cemetery _is_ his home.

 

 

It is Reiji who calls Yuuya, later, after a month of radio silence, after chrysanthemums have blossomed out of his right ear, and suggests that they go out to dinner together.

Yuuya shows up in Prada and floral perfume, breathing strips of petals out of his mouth and trying to swallow the rest. The receptionist at the restaurant, at least, has a little more decency to not scream in his face when he nears. He knows she will gossip afterwards, will shoot him dirty looks from across the room, but for now she leads him to a private table in the back, and smiles politely.

“Akaba-san informed us of your arrival, and we have prepared a table for you,” she says, putting down two menus even though Yuuya is the first and only to arrive. “Please take your time ordering.”

Yuuya watches as she walks away, heels clicking, and then two other waitstaff drag a partition halfway across the room. They place it in front of him.

Yuuya swallows.

A wall, to separate him from the rest of the customers, like he is something to be ashamed of. Like he is nothing but an undesirable. The only reason they tolerate him, he knows, is because Akaba Reiji, Chief Executive Officer of Leo Corporation, asked them to. He has no delusions about it otherwise.

His eyes scan the menu, but he is not hungry. He has never been, the past few months.

Akaba Reiji arrives ten minutes later, eight o’clock on the dot.

“Have you been waiting long?” asks Reiji, dragging out his own seat.

“No, I just got here,” Yuuya lies. “I don’t know what to order.”

“I can order for you.”

Dinner is clinical. There is nothing romantic about it, and Yuuya feels more out of place than any sort of emotional bond with his supposed soulmate.

It’s only when dessert comes that Reiji says something.

“I knew your father, once.”

“You did?” says Yuuya, blinking. “He died ten years ago. I was eight then.”

“He was an inspiration,” says Reiji, hands pressed against his cup of coffee. He doesn’t like sweets, he said. Dessert would be wasted on him. “I looked up to him and his shows.”

“Ah,” Yuuya looks down at his cheesecake, using the prongs of his fork to spear tiny pieces. “I did, too. I…”

The fork scrapes across the plate.

“I met him backstage eleven years ago. I was nine, then,” says Reiji, after Yuuya doesn’t continue his thought. “His belief in a brighter world was awe-inspiring. His works featuring characters finding value in companionship and heroism were nothing less than amazing to a child my age. I know now that his ideals were only that—ideals. Sakaki Yuushou never had the chance to change what he wanted. But his works still stay with me, to this day.”

“He wasn’t a coward,” Yuuya says, snarls, as if Reiji is another enemy that he knows all too well, as if he were waiting for a punchline. “He loved to perform. He loved mother and I. He taught me how to…”

Yuuya’s voice breaks, and chokes.

“I miss him. It’s been ten years but I miss him. I could never follow in his footsteps.”

“Your mother…”

“She died when I was fifteen. She died from _hanahaki-byou_.”

Because his mother had married the man who charmed her, and they had a child who charmed them, instead of following the footsteps of those flowers ordained by fate. His mother had coughed up fire poppies and died in scarlet larkspurs, died like her body went up in flames of orange and red.

Yuuya watched them lower her body into a pit in the ground and he had screamed.

Screamed and screamed and screamed.

No one brought flowers to her gravestone. She didn’t need them.

She was already covered in them.

“Yuuya.”

Yuuya inhales, wiping the sudden tears from his eyes. Even covered by flowers, he still cries. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get emotional—”

“It’s fine,” says Reiji, and his hand reaches forward to grasp Yuuya’s. He squeezes—not too hard, just a loose tightening of his fingers. “We can move on to other topics.”

“Y-Yes,” he can only say in reply, and coughs more petals from his mouth.

Dinner is clinical, and not at all romantic. Yuuya doesn’t mind, though. He finds that Reiji’s presence is more than enough to keep the swaths of flowers at bay in his throat. Perhaps, he lets himself hope. Perhaps, Yuuya is not dreaming.

Perhaps is not enough, but for now, it is.

 

 

Another month later, white daffodils grow out from the corner of his mouth.

Reiji is a busy man, that he knows. To hope for him to pay attention to Yuuya simply because of moral obligation to try to save his life is too much to ask for.

They send texts and emails, and sometimes they call.

_You sound like you’ve have a bad day, Reiji._

_It is work, and it is tiring._

_You should take a break._

_Deadlines don’t meet themselves, unfortunately._

_It would be good for your health._

_I suppose._

A lull, where Yuuya rolls over in his bed and winces only slightly as the bud of the daffodil gets caught under his neck. He pulls it out, and wants to uproot the entire plant. Instead, he traces the stem with his tongue, and gags.

_Yuuya?_

_It’s the flowers. It’s nothing._

_The flowers aren’t nothing._

If another one grows out of his mouth, he will no longer be able to speak. Likewise, if another flower grows out of his right eye, he will be blind. If they shall grow another out of his left ear, he will be deaf.

_Would you like to meet up again?_

Reiji doesn’t respond for a while.

Yuuya closes his eyes, and exhales.

_Yes._

 

 

They find a park instead of a restaurant, where they watch a merry-go-round spin past with dancing lights, at eleven o’clock at night.

“Have you ever been on a merry-go-round, Reiji?” asks Yuuya, exhaling frost into the winter air and watching as the daffodil lodged in his cheek stirs. Nothing grows in winter, but the flowers in his skin persist.

“No, I have not,” says Reiji. He is tall, imposing. Warm, too. Yuuya leans closer if only to bask in his heat. Reiji does not say a thing.

“You should, at least once,” he finds himself saying. He has not been on a merry-go-round since he was eight.

“Perhaps,” says Reiji, again. “Maybe in the morning.”

There is no hint of shame in that statement—an amusement for children, used by adults. Yuuya almost wishes he could revert back to his eight year old self. As it is, in death, there is no room for shame.

“I want to ride it, too,” Yuuya continues saying. “I haven’t in a while.”

“When you get better, I’ll take you.”

_When he gets better._

Yuuya can count the number of months he has left on one hand.

“It’s a promise, then!” he still smiles, and holds out his pinky. Hope flutters in his chest. “Take me when I’m better. Treat me.”

“You are demanding,” but Reiji quirks his lip, and slides his fingers between the spaces of Yuuya’s own, instead of holding his pinky. “But I’ll promise.”

They walk back to the car, hand in hand. Reiji smiling, Yuuya laughing.

 

 

Yet another month later, a layer of petals begin to cover the skin above his collarbone. They are curled like spider lilies and Yuuya scratches at them, but they stay.

Reiji calls him a day afterward.

_I will be on a business trip. I’ll be back in two weeks._

Reiji takes a month, and by then, the flowers have started to cover his arms.

 

 

“You are reckless, and stubborn,” says Yuuri, from his left side. “And beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” says Yuuya, incredulous. “I can barely move from the bed.”

“Unimportant,” says Yuuri, taking Yuuya’s hand in his own. He runs pale fingers along the stripe of white petals that dot his forearm, obscuring his skin. A few months ago, Yuuri’s skin tone had been quite a few shades lighter than Yuuya’s, but now Yuuya is almost as pale as Yuuri is. “I can still appreciate beauty where I can see it, no matter if you are incapacitated are not.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you enjoy the sight of me dying,” Yuuya jokes.

“Not dying, no,” Yuuri taps a finger to his mouth, smearing pollen on his lips. “Decay, rot, and then life. I just find it fascinating.”

“Right...”

“Ah, I’m not here for that,” Yuuri puts his arm down. “Akaba Reiji called. He wants to ask how you’re doing. I told him you were dying.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“No, I’m not,” and here, Yuuri turns a disapproving glance. There is still pollen on his lips. “It has been two months, maybe three. Four. Nothing, yet?”

“If someone is immune to _hanahaki-byou,_ it means they don’t have a soulmate,” says Yuuya, eyes downcast. “That’s what the legends say.”

“Legends are just legends,” Yuuri’s fingers are halting on his skin again, caressing his flowers like they are his own, like he likes to do every morning before he leaves. Like Yuuya is a display, another one of his potted plants. “You are here because you choose to be. Reiji has returned already.”

There are no lies from his mouth, and perhaps that’s what hurts the most.

“You’re right,” says Yuuya, in the end. “I haven’t sought him out again.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want him to see me like this. It’s… disgusting.”

“No, it is not,” says Yuuri. He taps his fingers on his elbow instead. “I told you if you wanted to die, I would leave you alone. Do you want to die?”

“... No.”

Yuuri says nothing in return, only gets up from his seat beside Yuuya, and leaves him alone in the room.

His answer is clear.

 

 

When Yuuya wakes up next, it is to an Armani jacket draped over a chair. He knows it is Reiji’s before he can even think about it. Yuuri wears labels, too: Gucci, and Louis Vuitton. Dolce & Gabbana. He’s no stranger to designer brands in the house.

He knows it’s Reiji’s because the flowers feel calm in his mouth, on his face. They cease to be, for a moment. Or perhaps Yuuya, when thinking of Reiji, can ignore them better. He doesn’t know which is which, or which he wants it to be.

 _A sign, a sign,_ he tries to tell himself.

Hope feels like his heart beating in his chest.

Reiji walks in, and—it is the first time Yuuya has seen him in anything other than a suit. He is in a white button-up, a folded collar, with his sleeves pulled up to his elbows. There are two steaming mugs in his hands.

In this room, he is not Akaba Reiji, CEO of Leo Corporation.

For now, for a split second, Yuuya sees him as Reiji, _just Reiji,_ his hope.

“Yuuri called me,” says Reiji, as a way of explanation. “He’s spending the week at another residence.”

“Really?” and Yuuya, worried, feels his throat go dry. “Why?”

“He wants us to spend time together,” Reiji sits down on the Armani-draped chair, and puts the mugs down on Yuuya’s nightstand. “As he so bluntly put it.”

Yuuya’s time can be counted on two fingers. Two months. Less, actually.

“What about work?”

“I have put it on hold for a moment, unless an emergency comes up,” says Reiji, nursing a coffee. “Or rather, Yuuri has. He refuses to get rid of the virus he has let run into my system.”

“Oh.”

Reiji takes a sip of his coffee.

“Hey, Reiji,” says Yuuya, looking at the window across the room. “I want to go on the merry-go-round. Can we go now?”

“No, we can’t. Not until you got better, remember?”

“You’re right,” perhaps Yuuya believes in those words. “Then, help me get better.”

Reiji looks taken aback. Yuuya has never been so bold, he knows, but the Yuuya of two months ago could still walk. Now, he cannot. Now, the flowers have almost taken him. Now, it is only a matter of time, just like everything else.

Now, there is a fire in his belly and a wanton desire to live.

Yuuya reaches forward, and Reiji meets him halfway.

“We don’t have to do anything,” says Yuuya, gripping the larger hand in his tightly. “I-If we could just…”

His cheeks heat up, the last semblance of shame making him stutter.

“I understand,” Reiji says, and finds a spot to lay down over the covers, to wrap his arms around Yuuya’s shoulders. Yuuya shudders—blissful, content, happy. Even proximity like this is enough to satisfy him. Yuuya craves affection, attention. He craves touch.

They don’t do anything more that day.

“Reiji,” Yuuya’s voice is drowsy, sleepy, about to fall into another dream. His words almost slur, like Yuuya is half-aware and half-awake, and trying his hardest to keep it that way. “You could get rid of that virus, right?”

Reiji laughs, a rumble that vibrates through his chest, and Yuuya hums in response, happy.

“In a heartbeat.”

Yuuya falls asleep, wrapped in warmth. The flowers halt.

 

 

The week goes by quickly, and Yuuya spends most of it falling in-and-out of consciousness. Reiji is the only constant to his bouts of lucidity in-between. There are still flowers on his face when he wakes: sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes in the morning, the afternoon. He touches his face and still feels petals.

But he has stopped coughing. That should be a victory in its own.

It is the last day of their week together when Yuuya finally asks. When he’s finally conscious enough to ask.

“Reiji, can we—” and the words die on his tongue. Shameful, shameful. Even now, he flushes.

“If you want to. Only if you want to.”

“But do _you_ want to?” asks Yuuya, hands clenching into fists. Scared, terrified. The feelings pool in his stomach and bubble there. “Do you want to?”

Hands, on his waist, on his face. Yuuya tilts his head up to stare into the purple abyss of Reiji’s gaze. He wonders how he looks to Reiji, covered in flowers and flower petals, an eye obscured by white. He must look like death, sickly and pale.

“I want to,” is the simplest answer Reiji can give. Yet, it is the best answer he can give.

Yuuya feels his heart flutter, staccato, halt. It picks up again.

They wait—for each other. Yuuya clings to the bunches of fabric he can grab in his hands, his weak hands, tries to move up, forward. _Reiji, Reiji, Reiji._

Life, it’s there. His heart is beating. His blood is rushing. Just centimeters he has to reach, and he can live.

Reiji meets him halfway—always.

Always halfway.

A sharp, shrill ring pierces his ears, and Yuuya stops his ascent. Dazed, confused, he tries to look around. Except.

Reiji lets him go, to answer his phone on the nightstand.

“Nakajima, I said emergencies only.”

Yuuya can’t hear what’s on the other side, but Reiji’s stance becomes stiff. He knows what happens next, and only hands Reiji his Armani jacket from the other side of the bed. Their week is over.

“Next time,” Reiji promises, presses a consolation to his forehead with his lips. He swings on his jacket, and grabs his bag. “Next time.”

“Next time,” Yuuya repeats.

Outside, it begins to rain, and pour. Yuuya counts the sound of the water against the glass, instead of Reiji’s beating heart, and falls asleep.

_Next time._

 

 

Reiji is gone for another two weeks, something about missing professors, missing faculty, about vigilante attacks. Yuuya doesn’t know, and he isn’t sure, but he doesn’t care, either. He spends those two weeks, like his previous two months, on his bed, unable to walk.

Those two weeks are another month mark. The flowers have grown to his chest, his torso. They close in on his heart. Another head of amaryllis grows out of his mouth. His speech is gone as he tries to desperately breathe through his flowers.

One finger, now. One month left.

Reiji takes two weeks to deal with his emergencies, but only finally comes to see Yuuya in the third week. He looks tired, haggard, like he hasn’t slept in months. Like Reiji had aged five years in the span of two weeks.

“I’m sorry,” says Reiji.

Yuuya only smiles, tries to say _it’s fine,_ but he cannot. The flowers in his throat are choking, stabbing. Even opening his mouth hurts. _You are tired,_ he tries again.

But Reiji knows. “You’re right,” he says, and he falls asleep too quickly.

Yuuya presses his face into Reiji’s chest, and inhales.

 

 

Three weeks left on his calendar, and Yuuya lets Reiji rest for another. When Reiji asks, Yuuya pretends he has more time, but that is only a fantasy. Time cannot be bought, or stalled for. He knows, as much as Reiji does.

They don’t talk about it, don’t _wish_ to talk about it, but.

Yuuya grabs Reiji’s shirt, his brand name pinstripes, his ruby cuff links, and exhales. One, two, he inhales. Three, four, exhale. The words have been stolen from his mouth, stolen to grow flowers on the nutrients of his tongue. Reiji knows this. Yuuya knows this.

Two weeks. He has two weeks.

“Yuuya,” says Reiji. Yuuya opens his mouth.

Air rushes out. Petals, too.

It is fruitless, but perhaps it is in Yuuya’s blood to fight, to hope.

 _Kiss me,_ he wants to say, but can’t.

Reiji kisses him.

Yuuya breathes into Reiji’s mouth, and tastes coffee on his tongue. It is bitter, dark, and not at all sweet. But the flowers in his mouth, pressing into Reiji’s face, slipping into his mouth—they, too, are bitter. _Bitter, bitter, bitter._ Yuuya hates the taste of flowers. He hates the taste of coffee, even on Reiji’s tongue.

They break apart, briefly, for less than a second, and then they find each other again. Yuuya kisses Reiji, and it is not chaste, not like his fleeting moments with Grace Tyler.

They kiss each other, and Yuuya swallows petals. He swallows stems, buds, roots. Reiji presses closer to him, mouth moving, searching. It is not beautiful; it is messy. Saliva, and tongues, and passioned breaths. The heat of his body, swelling, growing. Yuuya is dizzy when they part again, and again, and again.

The rain, it creates a backdrop.

Again. And again. And again.

 

 

There is another part of the legend that Yuuya knows, and this—this is a part that he has only overheard, after they buried his mother in the ground.

For six days and six nights, the villagers searched for the flower girl, and that is the part that everyone knows.

This, though: they say the flower girl hid for six days and six nights, changing her location frequently to throw off her pursuers. They say, if the flower girl had kept this up for another day, she would have escaped her fate. They say, and Yuuya has heard, that she grew tired of running on the six night, and stopped to rest by the mountain flowers.

The flower girl, knowing her fate was inescapable no matter how much she hid and ran, stopped. She did not have food; she did not have energy. She survived off of the mountain mushrooms she knew how to eat because she had spent her whole life there. But even that would not sustain her, and she knew this.

Unable to resist any longer, and lacking the will to carry on, the flower girl stopped.

Even as she shunned her fate, she had accepted it.

They say, on the last month, at the last week, _hanahaki-byou_ is incurable. The body gives up, like how the flower girl did. It rots, it decays, and it accepts its fate.

Yuuya knows, then:

All legends have some truth in them.

As he kisses Reiji, presses against him, feels his hands on his waist, he knows.

The flowers on his skin are not disappearing.

 

 

They part, breathless, flushed, and hazy. There is a want of something else in their eyes, something—something more permanent than a passionate kiss and the feel of their hands on each other. He wants to feel their bodies in sync, in movement, in short gasps and breaths that aren’t caused by the flowers growing out of his mouth and cause his cheeks to flush.

Yuuya, though, adverts his eyes, drops his gaze.

 _The flowers feel better,_ he lies with silence, and paints a smile like a glorious actor, an experienced pierrot. Reiji is not easily fooled, but Yuuya is not just any actor.

_They will wilt, soon. This I swear it._

Ticking, and ticking, and lies.

He can only wait, now.

(the flowers, they close in on his heart, his soul. if yuuya perhaps wanted, he could curse the flower girl in the same way she cursed him. _smiles,_ right, _only an ideal, never a truth._ but he doesn’t.)

 

 

They say, as much as _they_ want to say, that those who are immune to _hanahaki-byou_ , are those without soulmates. It is hearsay, and myth, and legend. But like all myths, there is a truth in that sentence, a truth Yuuya finds out too late.

False: those immune to _hanahaki-byou_ do not have soulmates.

Truth: those immune to _hanahaki-byou_ do have soulmates. But from the start, beyond the flower girl’s story, Yuuya was never meant to live. Those immune to _hanahaki-byou_ have soulmates who are destined to be let go, to die.  In exchange for _their_ life, fate takes another.

This time, it is Yuuya’s, for Reiji’s.

 

 

(what does reiji look like, when his flowers do not disappear from his face?)

 

 

Yuuya blooms white, like a ghost.

They place his body in a blanket of feathers, and flowers, as if his own corpse did not provide enough. They offer a sermon, a last rite, a variety of other things as he continues to breathe. And breathe. One day, he has left. He has counted it all.

Spring blooms on the same day he dies, pink cherry blossoms and a crystal blue sky. Yuuri doesn’t cry, and neither does Reiji. Rin, he has never known enough, and Kurosaki he has only ever heard about. They all come anyway.

But Yuugo cries.

And cries and cries and cries.

 

 

As they lower him into the pit, Yuuya wonders—

Is this the same loneliness his mother felt when she died? Is this the same crushing acceptance?

What does Reiji look like, staring at a body he could not save? What does Yuuya look like, being gone from this world with coffee on his tongue, flowers on his lips?

 

 

“I’m sorry,” it is Reiji's voice, piercing through the darkness. "If I had—"

And Yuuya smiles, for what a smiling corpse can look so beautiful, surrounded by death.

_You have done enough._

 

 

 

They bury him, barely alive. The flowers, they obscure him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In another life, perhaps—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love to suffer
> 
> thank you very much for reading! i had fun writing this story in a style different from my normal writing. since this style doesn't take as much out of me as, say, peach garden does, i have been able to finish it relatively fast. 
> 
> at first, this story was going to end on a happy note, and the bad end never really crossed my mind. but then i thought—everything always ends up happy in fics. i thought, what if, instead, i wrote this fic as something happy descending into sorrow? it mainly affected how i structured and wrote everything in a "hazy" mood. i have a bias for bad ends, at least in moderation, haha
> 
> i just really want to thank cakwe again for commissioning me! if you are also interested in commissioning me, please [go here](http://shiunins.tumblr.com/post/147842592624/shiuninswriting-commissions-open-due-to-my)! it would help me a lot if you could, even if you're purchasing something as small as a hundred words. i'll put all of my love into those one hundred words! (◍•ᴗ•◍) ♡
> 
> the art was by the lovely [squaffles](http://squaffle.deviantart.com/)! thank you as well for working with my extremely specific requirements, including everything from aging yuuya up to the use of muted colors. the outfit, i took out of a chinese fashion magazine. it was lovely working with you!
> 
> for this story, i recommend listening to [orange](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLO5QUE3KFU) to get the full mood
> 
> and of course, thank you, the reader, as well for reading! i wouldnt be here without all of you. if you could, please leave me a comment! i promise i read all of them! ♡


End file.
